My People

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My People is a collection of short stories by Caradoc Evans, first published in 1915 and very controversial at the time. It is subtitled Stories of the Peasantry of West Wales.

The work has been compared with Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, James Joyce's Dubliners (which came out two years later), and The House with the Green Shutters by George Douglas Brown.

In its context of early 20th century Nonconformism, the book was designed to shock. Biblical language is used (Evans having learned English largely from this source) in stories where meanness and violence figure prominently. The Western Mail commented that its author would appear to have raked in the garbage of the countryside for his characters. Many Welsh readers considered it a betrayal of his homeland.